


for one so small, you seem so strong

by cosimamanning



Series: just one, i'm a few [5]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Big Happy Family, F/F, learning things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 22:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11473269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosimamanning/pseuds/cosimamanning
Summary: A study in Kira.





	for one so small, you seem so strong

**Author's Note:**

> hi yes phil collins went hard on the tarzan soundtrack and it makes me cry
> 
> some of the color aspects linking w emotions were inspired by sharky's fic [the spiders crawling in](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11276553) which I highly recommend you reading, as well as all of natalie's other works because they're amazing. 
> 
> special thanks, as always, to the group chat for yelling at me <3

Her mothers tell her the story of the night she was born on the days where her feet drag and her shoulders slump. 

They’re both excellent storytellers. Kira loves their stories, the ones about the captain the most. Images are painted so clearly in her mind that she can see them,  _ feel _ them the same way she feels her mothers all the time, feels their love wrapping around her, warm and welcoming, feels their fear, their sorrow. 

It’s a rainy night, Mom tells her, one of the worst storms of the year. Her knuckles shine white in a stark contrast against the black of the steering wheel and if Kira listens hard enough she can hear Mum swearing. 

“Don't let her fool you, Monkey,” Mum tells her, “she was just as scared as I was.” Kira knows that Mum’s scared of storms, feels the fear and the sadness creep into her spine at the first rumblings of thunder, and on the nights where storm clouds roll over their home Kira curls into bed with her mothers, grasps tightly onto Mum’s hand until the fear and sadness slowly ebs away, and Mom tells them stories. 

They tell her it was the happiest day of their life. 

Kira can’t remember it, no matter how hard she tries, but Uncle Felix has videos. Her eyes go wide as saucers every time she sees it, because she's so  _ little _ , and she can't feel them then, not in the past, but she doesn't need to, because she can so clearly see the love pouring out of the two of them, in the tears streaming down Mom’s face and the tired, proud little smile on Mum’s. 

“You're our little miracle,” they tell her, and Kira believes them, because there's nothing but faith and love vibrating through them when they say it. 

From her mothers, Kira learns love. 

Uncle Felix is as constant in Kira’s life as her mothers, always there with a smile and hands to ruffle her hair. Kira can't feel him, but she doesn't think she needs to. 

Uncle Felix teaches her how to paint, explaining to Kira how different colors make different people feel. Mom gets sad watching sometimes, and Kira doesn't know why, but she feels her emotions in blues, dark and rolling like the waves of the sea. Felix sketches Kira’s profile at hundreds of angles, captures the shine in her eyes and the curve of her jaw and the curl in her hair. 

“Art is expression,” he tells her, “it's what you feel and sometimes can't get out.” Kira has hundreds of colors trapped inside of her, waiting to be explained, and so she puts them to canvas tentatively. Felix is there, always there, smiling and offering nothing but praise, hanging her pieces alongside his own in the loft, and Kira beams up at him. 

“How come you never use red?” he asks her, once, and Kira blinks up at him. She's small, but the colors filling her are so much bigger, and sometimes she thinks that she might explode. 

“Red is angry,” she whispers. She's scared of what red brings, she sees whispers of red in the nights where Auntie Helena knocks on the door, shaking, unable to breathe until she's in Mum’s arms, in the scars on Auntie Mika’s face,  _ feels _ it, twisted and bitter and  _ wrong _ , inside of her. 

Felix crouches down to her level and places his hands on her shoulders so that they're eye to eye. 

“It’s okay to be angry,” he tells her, “cleansing, really, to get all the negative energy out of you. Like a rebirth.”

Kira isn't sure if she really understands, but she nods, dipping her brush, for once, into red before bringing it over the canvas. 

Auntie Helena is so bright it's blinding, and being around her makes Kira  _ ache _ , because there's a sadness that Helena’s bones can't seem to shake, a guilt, a fear of herself. But there's also such unbridled joy, such hope, so much love. 

Helena sneaks her extra food even when Kira’s full on reflex, like she thinks that Kira’s moms won't feed her, and shoots Mum guilty looks every time she remembers. 

They go to the park together and Helena teaches her how to climb trees, lifting her when tiny limbs aren't enough, and Kira wonders if Helena had anyone to help her. 

They feed the ducks together, oats, because Mom tells them bread is bad for their  _ di-ges-tive _ systems. Kira sounds out the word extra careful and Helena claps when she gets it right. 

“I like ducks,” Kira announces, with the decisiveness of any child her age when faced with decisions like these. Helena’s eyes are sharp, focused, as she watches them swim, pecking at the oats Kira throws to them. She nods, once, slowly. 

“Ducks are good,” she agrees, and Kira has a sinking suspicion she's thinking about roast duck. “Why do you like them?”

“They can walk and swim  _ and  _ fly.” Kira’s eyes bore into Helena’s. “I want to fly.”

“You already can, little angel,” Helena tells her, secrets hidden in the depths of her eyes, and Kira thinks it's one of those moments where the adults say  _ you’ll understand when you're older,  _ “you just need to find your wings.” 

Kira looks around mournfully, but sees only ducks. They quack, expecting more oats, and Helena throws the sound back expertly, and Kira can't help but laugh. 

Whenever she's with Helena, she feels lighter, and her heart soars, and it feels a little bit like flying. 

Auntie Alison teaches her how to bake. 

Auntie Alison teaches her lots of things, but baking is the first. Kira compares it to some of the science experiments she does with Mom, and Alison just rolls her eyes fondly and says she supposes that cooking is a bit of a science. Kira laughs, because it's the one science Mom can't seem to master. 

They measure out everything perfectly, flour and sugar, and Alison lets Kira crack the eggs as long as she’s careful. She and Auntie Beth keep chickens in a coop in their backyard, it’s huge and foresty and fit for exploring. Sometimes they camp there, as a family, Helena making shadow puppets while Kira munches happily on s’mores. 

Eggshells are so fragile, so easy to break. Kira watches the way the cracks form, like little bolts of lightning, speckled across the expanse of off-white, focuses on weak points so that she won’t get pieces in the batter. 

Kira’s own skin is smooth, but there’s a firmness to it, like the rest of her family. She’s made of flesh and bone and muscle, not prone to breaking, and Kira watches her family as keenly as she watches the eggs she cracks, and knows they’re strong, but she also knows that they have cracks in them, too, invisible to the human eye, running through them as deeply as their emotions. 

“You have to be patient,” Alison tells her, because Kira always tries to eat the sweets before they’ve cooled, before they’ve set, “sometimes, things take time.”

Alison teaches her patience, keeps her little hands from burning, and Kira learns that sometimes healing takes time, and that sometimes little cracks never fully heal. They’re there, she can feel them, but they dull, over time. 

Kira grows, inch after inch, sprouting like a sapling, and her moms mark her growth on her bedroom door frame in marker. It’s a visual reminder, looking back, at where she started, and where she’s going. 

Uncle Tony seemed like a myth once, because he’s always off on his own adventures. He always comes home for Kira’s birthdays, though, with a smile, and every time he comes back his voice is a little bit deeper, his facial hair a little more unkempt. He flirts with Uncle Felix and Kira giggles when Felix rolls his eyes and shoves him. 

On her ninth birthday, Tony presents her with a potted plumeria, and Kira proudly places it on her windowsill for the optimal amount of sunlight. He tells her, very softly, the proper amount of water to give it, how to tend to the soil, and how to change the pots when the plant grows too big. 

Kira takes to it as she takes to most tasks, like a fish to water, and Tony beams at her when he comes back to check on her, always with new flowers, and sees her little windowsill garden thriving. 

“I know it can be a bit much, sometimes,” he explains when he gives her the plumeria, “for everyone to be protecting you all the time.” Kira loves her family fiercely, but sometimes she wishes that they would let her breathe, for a moment, let her spread her wings and  _ fly _ , like Helena says she can. “Flowers give you something to take care of, to watch grow.”

Watching them bloom, petals unfurling, Kira understands why her mothers watch her so keenly, why her aunts and uncles are always a step behind her, waiting to catch her if she falters. She feels important, being a caretaker, for having something depend on her, for once. 

She sees her Auntie Krystal almost as often as she sees her Uncle Tony, which is to say, not very much, even though she lives only a short thirty minutes or so away from them. Krystal is a wandering soul, always has been, and there are days where she is scared and Kira can feel it, wants to reach out to her and help her grow like Tony taught her. 

Krystal blinks back at her when Kira stares at her with knowing eyes and shifts uncomfortably on her feet, because Krystal’s better with infants and teenagers than she is with this age, the in-between, with children. 

“Thanks for this,” Mum tells her, as she bustles out of the house, kissing Kira on the forehead and tugging Mom along, because Mom always has a habit of making them late for things, “I owe you one.” Krystal just rolls her eyes and purses her lips and plops down across from Kira on the couch and they just look at each other. 

“I can paint your nails,” she offers, after a while, and it’s a peace offering, reminds Kira of painting with Uncle Felix, and she nods, smiling. Kira eyes the selection with keen eyes, and settles on a pale, happy yellow. The kind of happiness that settles low in your belly and just warms you, a soft buzz, the smooth sweetness of honey. 

Kira tells her what this means, and Krystal takes pause, considering. 

“What color should I use?”

Kira thinks about it, feels for her, remembers the way she knows Krystal, searching and oftentimes lost. Sometimes she thinks all Krystal wants is to  _ know _ , to really understand, to be safe in some sort of truth. 

“Gold,” Kira understands, because gold is illumination and wisdom, gold is the visage of another aunt she sees only on occasion who she knows has a mind Krystal longs to pick. And gold  _ shines _ , bright and sparkling, like the sunlight reflecting off of Krystal’s hair, Krystal’s smile, like the soft honesty of Krystal’s heart, somehow unsullied, left more intact than the others’. 

Krystal smiles at her and runs a hand through Kira’s curls before setting to work on her own nails, making idle chatter as she goes. 

“Good choice,” she agrees, once her work is finished, admiring the way the light catches the color. In another world, gold saves their lives, keeps them grounded. Gold connects them. Here, gold teaches Kira that she can comfort. 

Kira goes to school and soaks in knowledge eagerly, like a sponge, desperate to learn as much as she can. There are only so many things her family can teach her, so many lessons she can learn at the hands of people with the same face but hearts that are so different, and she needs friends, socialization. 

Her best friend is named Aisha and she’s smart as a whip and reminds Kira of her Mom, and her eyes are always filled with so many questions. Kira can’t feel her, and it’s strange, to be surrounded now by so many people and to not know them the way she knows people so instinctively, not know her secrets. 

Aisha doesn’t tell her that she’s sick and Kira stings with something that feels like betrayal. 

She sulks in her room and doesn’t talk to her mothers, because she doesn’t want to bring up memories for them, drag up demons of the past, because they more than anyone know about sickness. It’s her Aunt Mika who finds her―Aunt Mika who gifts her warm woollen hoodies and video games on her birthdays―and gently coaxes her way into her room with a glass of iced tea. 

Kira’s eyes sting with tears and she’s tired, for a moment, of having all of them bottled up inside of her, tired of feeling everything, because she just wants a moment for her feelings to be her own. 

She sips at the drink when Mika offers it to her, though, and the sugary sweetness helps more than she thought it would, and there’s a soothing calmness radiating off of her in pale, light blues, and Kira breathes and Mika doesn’t say a word until Kira is ready for her to. 

“It is hard to forgive,” she finally says, “but it is harder not to.”

She and Aisha are back to their usual routine within the week, and Kira thinks that Mika was right. 

When she’s thirteen, Beth takes her to the backyard she shares with Alison, out past the trees and to the fields, because they live out past the suburbs, where it’s quiet. Aunt Beth complains about the commute to work but Kira knows she needs it, the quiet, the calm, needs it to calm the chaos in her head on the days where sometimes it’s too much. 

There are targets set up, and Beth puts a gun in her hand, and Kira looks up at her with wide, panicked eyes, not knowing what to do with herself. 

“You’re Sarah Manning’s daughter,” Beth tells her, as though it’s some sort of explanation, “you’re going to get into some sort of trouble sooner or later whether you try to or not, and it’s best you be prepared.”

She shows her how to hold the gun, how to be safe, steadies her arm even when she shakes, reminds her to breathe when Kira forgets, and out there, in the field, just the two of them, it feels like a different world. 

Kira isn’t a natural, but here, she doesn’t have to be. There are no organizations chasing after her biology, and if there were, she has a family fit to burst waiting to protect her, aunts and uncles stronger than they know whose love she feels radiating through her constantly. 

Beth smiles at her, warmly, and ruffles her hair, and Kira grins back. 

“Mom has no idea, does she?”

Beth shakes her head, because out of all of them Cosima has always been the least violent. Even Alison has a gun locker, but not Cosima. Never Cosima. 

“She’s gonna kill you.”

Beth rolls her eyes, and fixes Kira’s feet, and Kira doesn’t feel very brave but she doesn’t have to be, not when she has Beth to be brave for her. Beth is a strong presence in her, here, supported by love and warmth and nurtured by quiet, and here, Beth doesn’t crumble. Here, Beth teaches Kira how to be brave. 

Kira knows Mum doesn’t trust Aunt Rachel, thinks it’s mostly because of the way Aunt Rachel curls her lip at her and looks at her like she’s a street urchin, and the way she and Auntie Beth exchange insults, but Aunt Mika smiles at her softly, and Rachel looks at Mom as though she’s remembering someone else, and Mom lets her. 

Rachel brings her to a mansion that Kira has heard about only in stories when she is fifteen, lets her trace her hands down hallways and brings her into hidden alcoves and secret passageways. She ducks into bedrooms and explores, trying to match them to her aunts and uncle. 

One of the passages leads her into a bathroom that opens into a room painted a bright mix-match of colors, faded posters of sharks peeling off of the walls, and Kira feels as though she’s walked into one of her Mom’s stories. Her hands trace on surfaces lined with dust, on the ridges of seashells that have been left on shelves, and Kira remembers going to the beach with her mothers, remembers the girl basked in sunlight and draped in the ocean, smiling at her. 

They’re the same age, now, Kira realizes. 

“Does it ever get lonely, here?” Kira asks her, once she’s done exploring, and the two of them sip at tea in the library and Kira’s hands trace at notes in loopy handwriting in a book that are signed  _ JF.  _ Rachel startles, because it’s a familiar question, and she stares at Kira like Mom stares at her sometimes, like Rachel stares at her Mom sometimes. Like she’s remembering. 

“It used to,” Rachel settles on an answer, leaning back into her chair. She doesn’t curl into herself anymore, doesn’t make herself small. Kira knows that Mika comes around for tea every Tuesday and Thursday and that Tony still comes to the greenhouses to tend to his gardens. She keeps birds, and Kira stumbles upon a one-eyed cat clawing at hanging origami boats that Rachel tells her is named Fitz. “I’m learning, even still.”

Rachel invites her to tea and Mika takes her, and on the days she can’t go, Rachel sends her books, and Kira treasures the little notes in the margins. Kira loves her aunt fiercely, stubbornly, and Rachel loves her in return, in her own way. 

Rachel teaches her the rewards of persistence. 

When Kira is sixteen Aisha’s sickness overtakes her and Kira is overpowered with a grief so strong it consumes her and she doesn’t know what to do. The colors around her grow dull and her moms pack up their bags and return to the seaside, where the lull of the waves coaxes her to sleep and the smell of saltwater is enough to urge wakefulness into her body. 

She digs the little stuffed shark out from her closet and clutches him close to her chest and sets out to the water and sits, and she waits. 

She’s joined, a little moment later, and Kira’s older than her now. Taller. 

Jennifer smiles at her, sadly. Jennifer has been watching her all her life, but Kira only gets to see her here, only sometimes. 

“Is she okay?” she asks, after a moment. 

“There are no hurts here,” Jennifer tells her, and Kira wants to cry, surrounded by saltwater. Jennifer lifts an arm as though to comfort her, but they both know she can’t. Kira can’t feel Jennifer, because she’s gone, but sometimes she feels echoes of her, gentle reminders, in the others. In Mom, in Rachel, in Beth. 

“How do I heal?” Kira asks, because she’s tired, and sad, and wants answers. 

“You let your arms carry you as far as you can,” Jennifer tells her, “and then you just float, and let the ocean do the rest.” 

Kira blinks, and Jennifer blinks back, the ocean lapping at their feet, and Jennifer doesn’t look like the hero from the tales of Kira’s childhood, she just looks like a girl, younger than Kira, full of life and promise that was taken from her too soon, and she reminds Kira of Aisha. 

Kira goes home, hugs her mothers, pets Buckminster from where he lazes, old and graying, has tea with Rachel and Mika and learns as much as she can from the others. She waters her plants and bakes and feeds the ducks with Helena, smears paint across canvas with Felix and across her nails with Krystal, sucks in breath and shoots at targets with Beth. 

She comes home and she cries and her moms are there. 

They tell her the story about the night she was born. 

Kira has Sarah’s fierce determination and Cosima’s curious nature and she is their miracle, and when they tell her it was the happiest night of their life, she believes them. 

Kira lets her arms carry her as far as she can, and her family is there for the rest, holding her up, letting her grow, letting her heal. 

The ocean doesn’t call for her for a long time. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hope you enjoyed :) comments and kudos greatly appreciated, they keep me going. 
> 
> as always, you can prompt me on tumblr [here](danaryas.tumblr.com) and check out some of my other stuff [here](archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/works)
> 
> have a lovely day!


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